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The decision taken by the
University of the West
Indies (UWI) in 2011 to
implement a revised Grade
Point Average (GPA) Scheme
for its students with effect
from September 2014 is likely
to have an impact on the
funding of the Government
Assistance for Tuition Expens-
es Programme (Gatee) for UWI
students by the Government
of T&T.
Senior reporter Renuka
Singh has revealed in today s
Sunday Guardian that there is
still some work to be done by
the St Augustine campus of
UWI to familiarise students
with the changes that will
come into effect in September.
The changes being imple-
mented at the UWI were
described in a press release,
posted on the UWI, St Augus-
tine, Web site, on September
12, 2013, by Prof Alan Cobley,
pro-vice chancellor and chair
of the board for undergraduate
studies, as follows:
"The new scheme will
change the way in which the
performance of students is
represented on their tran-
scripts, however, it will not
change the standard of The
UWI degree."
The major issue in the
changes being made is
described in the following way
in the press release:
"For instance, a passing
grade in the current scheme is
represented as a D , with a
quality point of 1.00.
In the revised scheme, a
passing grade will be repre-
sented as C , with a quality
point of 2.00."
It is that change that brings
the policy of the Government
of T&T on the funding for
Gate into the picture.
At the moment, students
have to maintain a GPA of 1.0
to qualify for Gate funding,
otherwise they will have to
pay their fees themselves.
Will the Government of T&T
continue to fund UWI stu-
dents with a GPA between 1.0
and 1.99---despite the fact that
they will now be considered
as failing students under the
revised GPA scheme being
introduced?
This is a fundamental ques-
tion for the taxpayer.
In a flyer that is being
widely distributed among stu-
dents and staff at UWI, the
new system being introduced
shows that students will con-
tinue to earn quality points
towards their degree despite
the fact that they have failed.
The UWI has now reclassi-
fied failure from a single allo-
cation of zero quality points
into a revised three-zone cat-
egory of F1, F2 and F3 with
1.70, 1.30 and 0 quality points
respectively.
With students being able to
earn 1.70 quality points for
the F1 and 1.30 quality points
for the F2 categories, it means
that they will still qualify for
Gate funding despite their
failure, because the Govern-
ment policy is to make the
Gate payments for students
with a GPA of 1.0 and above.
The Government of T&T
now has to decide whether it
will continue to make these
Gate payments for failing UWI
students in the new F1 and F2
bands, or whether they will
change the level at which Gate
funding is available from a
GPA of 1.0 to 2.0.
Will Govt fund Gate for failing UWI students?
With students being able to earn 1.70 quality points for the F1 and 1.30
quality points for the F2 categories, it means that they will still qualify for
Gate funding despite their failure, because the Government policy is to make
the Gate payments for students with a GPA of 1.0 and above.
A24
SUNDAY,
APRIL 27,
2014
• Twitter: @GuardianTT • Web: guardian.co.tt
A product of Sunday Guardian
Contact us
Editor-in-Chief, Judy Raymond
judy.raymond@guardian.co.tt
Sunday Editor, Debra Wanser
debra.wanser@guardian.co.tt
Newsroom:
Newsroom (Sunday) Telephone: 623-8870/9,
ext. 2362, 2552, 2722, 2724
SG e-mail: sundesk@guardian.co.tt
E-mail the Editor: letters@guardian.co.tt
Newsroom (daily) Telephone: 623-8870/9,
ext. 2251, 2252, 2222, 2242; 623-News
Newsroom e-mail: newsroom@guardian.co.tt
Fax: (News) 625-7211; (Advertising) 623-2050
Managing Director, Gabriel Faria
Circulation Manager, Cashyap Sharma
Sales Manager, Sonja Romany
sonja.romany@guardian.co.tt
Port-of-Spain office:
22-24 St Vincent Street, (PO Box 122)
Telephone: 623-8870/9; 623-7543;
625-7380/3
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Chaguanas Bureau: 665-1977
Internet address: www.guardian.co.tt
Sunday
QUATTRO MUSICA
Members of
Quattro
Musica
perform
Amazing Grace
during
Afternoon Tea
in celebration
of Easter
hosted by
Prime Minister
Kamla Persad-
Bissessar at
the Diplomatic
Centre, St
Ann's, on
Thursday. The
quartet Marvin
Smith, left,
Neval Chatelal
Andre
Mangatal and
Stephan
Furlonge.
The well-respected educator, Dr
Claude Packer, has called for a
revolution in the teaching of
mathematics in Jamaica, a subject with
which Jamaicans students have long
struggled. The noted educator, who is
president of the venerable Mico
University College, chided his colleagues
for spending more time imparting
lower-level algorithms than problem-
solving techniques. Long before Dr
Packer's speech, many people have been
trying to understand why Jamaican
students continue to do poorly in
mathematics. Dr Packer suggested that
the mathematics problems are rooted in
the country's colonial past.
He told his colleagues at a Montego
Bay seminar recently: "At the end of
slavery in Jamaica, nobody expected
Third World people to create, think and
innovate ... so basically, a curriculum was
designed for us to be hewers of wood
and drawers of water. We were to
compute only---going to work on the
farms---so we had to learn to add and
multiply...We were being taught low-
level mathematics, and this has been
happening for centuries, and it is still
happening."
The looming question is this: Why
haven't educators like Dr Packer
become engaged in an exercise to
diagnose student strengths and
weaknesses and inform curriculum
decision-making over these many
years? Should teacher-training
institutions share blame for this gap in
teacher development? Dr Packer stated
that every activity has a mathematical
base and suggested a correlation
between people's dislike for the subject
and the way it is imparted. He said
teaching low-level algorithms stifles the
creative thought processes of students,
which sometimes leads them into
deviant behaviour, including boys
resorting to the gun as a means of
creative expression. He said
mathematics textbooks prepared in the
United States and England for the
teaching of mathematics have been
"foisted upon" Jamaican students, who
have failed to embrace the concepts
contained in those texts.
(Daily Gleaner, Jamaica)
Sound Off: Teaching maths the wrong way